Wayve, a market leader in Embodied AI-based autonomous driving, announced the successful closing of $1.05 billion in Series C funding. SoftBank Group led the funding round, which also included new investor NVIDIA and existing investor Microsoft. This investment will accelerate Wayve’s goal to reimagine autonomous mobility through embodied intelligence.
Embodied AI represents the next frontier of AI innovation, going beyond GenAI and large language models (LLMs). Integrating Embodied AI into vehicles and robots will lead to a paradigm shift in how machines interact with and learn from human behavior in real-world environments.
This technology has tremendous potential for enhancing the usability and safety of autonomous driving systems, enabling them to navigate situations that do not follow strict patterns or rules, such as unexpected actions by drivers, pedestrians, or environmental elements.
Launched in 2017, Wayve emerged as an innovator in Embodied AI for autonomous driving. And Wayve was the first to develop and test an end-to-end (e2e) AI autonomous driving system on public roads.
This effort paved the way for an industry-wide shift towards AI, known as ‘AV2.0’. Wayve has successfully created foundation models for autonomy, similar to a GPT for driving, which can empower any vehicle to perceive its surroundings and safely drive through diverse environments.
Integrating Embodied AI into vehicles and robots will shift how machines interact with and learn from human behavior in real-world environments.
Wayve also dedicated years of extensive research and development to establishing itself as the market leader in AV2.0. And they have developed hardware-agnostic AI driving models for mapless autonomous driving and a suite of innovative technologies like fleet learning, data infrastructure, evaluation, and simulation platforms designed for rapidly enhancing their AI models using real-world and simulated data.
Using Wayve’s advanced tools, OEMs and fleet owners can generate valuable data assets, bridging the gap between raw data and unparalleled driving capabilities. And the company’s research on multimodal and generative models, known as LINGO and GAIA, is driving the automotive industry towards a future where AI in vehicles can offer advanced features like intuition, language-responsive interfaces, personalized driving styles, and co-piloting to enhance the automated driving experience.
Wayve’s hardware-agnostic and mapless product solutions enable OEMs to efficiently software upgrade cars to higher levels of driving automation (from ‘eyes on’ assisted driving to ‘eyes off’ fully automated driving) as Wayve’s AI models progress.
The company will also focus on scaling its foundation models, advancing Embodied AI research, and building an industry-leading AV2.0 Platform with reliable simulation, measurement, and active learning tools for automotive applications. These funds will enable Wayve to expand operations and partnerships in new markets, building geographically diverse data assets and attracting global talent.
SoftBank joined Wayve’s Board of Directors in connection with the funding round.
KEY QUOTES:
“At Wayve, our vision is to develop autonomous technology that not only becomes a reality in millions of vehicles but also earns people’s trust by seamlessly integrating into their everyday lives to unlock extraordinary value. This significant funding milestone highlights our team’s unwavering conviction that Embodied AI will address the long-standing challenges the industry has faced in scaling this technology to everyone, everywhere.
“Our collaboration with SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Microsoft will help advance our mission to redefine driving with AI at the core. This investment will enable us to develop and launch our first Embodied AI products for the automotive industry, empowering OEMs to provide consumers with trustworthy and beneficial automated driving experiences.”
- Alex Kendall, Co-founder and CEO of Wayve
“AI is revolutionizing mobility. Vehicles can now interpret their surroundings like humans, enabling enhanced decision-making that promises higher safety standards. The potential of this type of technology is transformative; it could eliminate 99% of traffic accidents. SoftBank Group is delighted to be at the forefront of this effort with Wayve, as advanced intelligence redefines mobility and connectivity, contributing to a more convenient and safer society.”
- Kentaro Matsui, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, Head of the New Business Office at SoftBank Group and Board Member at Wayve
“Wayve is pioneering new AI applications for their next-generation AV2.0 approach, built on NVIDIA DRIVE Orin and DRIVE Thor, which uses the new NVIDIA Blackwell architecture designed for transformer, LLM, and Generative AI workloads. Together, we can help enable self-driving vehicles that deliver the intelligence, dependability, and skill of the best human drivers.”
- Rishi Dhall, Vice President of Automotive Business at NVIDIA
“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Wayve to develop and deploy Wayve’s end-to-end AI autonomous driving products for automotive enterprise customers. By utilizing Microsoft’s supercomputing capabilities and cloud computing technology, copilot-enabled developer platform, enterprise data management applications, and leading AI model commercialization expertise, Wayve can deliver and scale innovative Embodied AI solutions that enable safer and more accessible autonomous driving experiences.”
- Dominik Wee, Corporate Vice President of Manufacturing and Mobility at Microsoft
“Since the company’s inception, Wayve has led AI innovation, initially pioneering the once-highly contrarian concept of end-to-end AI to now reshaping the industry with their visionary approach. The team’s commitment to challenging the status quo and persistence in seeing it through demonstrate their capacity to make a big, long lasting impact on the world. The application of AI in critical safety tasks like driving goes beyond simply tacking on a large language model to a vehicle — it demands specialized model architectures, extensive fleet learning, diverse driving datasets, access to supercomputing at scale, and smart regulations that both protect consumers and foster innovation. Wayve’s team has dedicated years to gaining a competitive edge in these key areas, uniquely positioning the company to unlock the vast potential of Embodied AI for automotive and beyond.”
- Seth Winterroth, Partner at Eclipse Ventures and Board Member at Wayve
“From the first electric light bulb or the World Wide Web to AI and self-driving cars, the UK has a proud record of being at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advancements in history.”
“I’m incredibly proud that the UK is the home for pioneers like Wayve who are breaking ground as they develop the next generation of AI models for self-driving cars. The fact that a homegrown British business has secured the biggest investment yet in a UK AI company is a testament to our leadership in this industry and that our plan for the economy is working.”
“We are leaving no stone unturned to create the economic conditions for businesses to grow and thrive in the UK. We already have the third highest number of AI companies and private investment in AI in the world, and this announcement anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower.”
- Prime Minister, Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP
